7 Restaurant Chains Ohio Used to Take for Granted That Are Vanishing

York Steak House opened its first cafeteria-style counter in a Columbus shopping center in 1966 and grew to nearly 200 restaurants in 27 states by 1982.

One is left.

It’s in Columbus.

These are the restaurant chains Ohio used to take for granted that are vanishing.

1. Ponderosa Steakhouse

Ponderosa Steakhouse turned Dayton into a steakhouse capital in 1974, when the company built a corporate headquarters near Dayton International Airport shaped like a giant steak.

By 1989, the chain ran 736 restaurants nationwide, more than any other steakhouse chain in the country, the same year it came under common ownership with rival Bonanza.

Bankruptcy hit in 2008.

The combined company had shrunk to about 220 locations by the time Ponderosa abruptly closed its Riverside restaurant near Dayton, leaving the area with a single location.

FAT Brands Inc. (a publicly traded restaurant holding company) bought what remained in 2017, when Ponderosa and Bonanza together ran barely more than 120 restaurants worldwide.

Roughly a dozen Ponderosa restaurants are left standing nationwide today.

Ohio has lost several restaurants along the way.

A Warren location closed for good in 2022, after a franchisee who had run it more than 35 years chose not to renew the agreement.

2. York Steak House

York Steak House opened its first cafeteria-style counter in a Columbus shopping center in 1966, letting shoppers slide a tray past a steak carver instead of waiting on table service.

The idea spread fast.

By 1982, York ran nearly 200 restaurants in 27 states, tucked into malls from coast to coast as shopping centers became where Americans ate lunch.

Mall traffic started fading in the late 1980s, and York’s cafeteria line faded with it.

One location never closed.

One of York’s Columbus restaurants, on West Broad Street, kept serving for decades under longtime owner Jay Bettin.

Bettin retired in 2024 after 45 years and sold the restaurant to Tim Burkhammer.

The Ohio Department of Taxation nearly shut the doors for good this February over unpaid taxes.

Burkhammer settled the debt and kept the last York Steak House on the planet open.

3. Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips

Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips launched in Columbus in 1969, when Dave Thomas helped bring British-style fish and chips to Ohio, the same year he helped found Wendy’s.

The chain grew fast off that idea.

By the late 1970s, Arthur Treacher’s had passed 800 restaurants nationwide, one of the biggest seafood chains in the country.

Then it didn’t.

Ownership changes and a shrinking footprint left the chain with almost nothing standing by the 2000s.

Arthur Treacher’s is down to three standalone restaurants today, and every one sits in northeast Ohio: Cuyahoga Falls, Garfield Heights, and a new Cleveland Heights location that opened in 2025.

4. Rax Roast Beef

Rax Roast Beef opened its first restaurant in Springfield, Ohio, in 1967, back when it still went by the name Jax.

Growth came quick.

Rax passed 500 restaurants in 38 states by the 1980s, competing directly with Arby’s for the roast beef sandwich crowd.

The company went bankrupt in the early 1990s.

Many of its restaurants closed within a few years.

Six Rax restaurants remain nationwide today, and four of them sit in Ohio: Circleville, Lancaster, Ironton, and New Carlisle.

One owner, Richard Donohue, runs every remaining Rax, including the Ironton location that now doubles as the company’s headquarters.

5. Damon’s Grill

Damon’s Grill opened its doors in Columbus in 1979, when restaurateur Frank Simonetti built a rib joint around a wood-fired grill and a name that stuck.

Ohio diners filled the booths for years.

Damon’s grew past 150 locations by the early 2000s, spreading a sports bar and rib house format from Chillicothe to Sandusky to Steubenville.

The chain filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

Ohio felt it first.

The University Boulevard restaurant in Steubenville closed on October 28, 2017, after more than 20 years, one of only two Damon’s still open in Ohio at that point.

Ohio’s other holdout, the Sandusky location, has since closed too, and the state hasn’t had a Damon’s since.

What’s left of Damon’s today is five locations run independently in other states, among them South Carolina and Pennsylvania, with no corporate office behind any of them.

6. Bob Evans

Bob Evans opened its first restaurant in Rio Grande, Ohio, in 1962, built around the same sausage recipe Bob Evans sold out of his farmhouse kitchen.

The chain grew from that one Ohio kitchen into a regional name across the Midwest and beyond.

It’s changed hands twice in less than a decade.

Bob Evans Farms itself closed 27 restaurants in 2016, two of them in Ohio, before it ever sold off the restaurant side of the business.

Bob Evans Farms completed the sale of its restaurant business to Golden Gate Capital on April 28, 2017, for $565 million.

A second sale followed.

A New York investment firm called 4×4 Capital bought Bob Evans from Golden Gate this February.

The chain, still headquartered in New Albany, Ohio, now runs a little more than 400 restaurants in 18 states, down from 548 a decade earlier.

A Bob Evans on Columbus’s East Broad Street had closed for good by 2024, its building now slated to become a Wendy’s.

A Fairfield restaurant on Dixie Highway shut down abruptly too, with no announcement from the company.

7. Steak Escape

Steak Escape opened inside a 209-square-foot Columbus storefront in 1982, when founders Ken Smith and Mark Turner bet a griddled cheesesteak sandwich could out-earn a full-service restaurant.

It worked.

Steak Escape grew into a mall food court fixture, expanding past 140 locations across the country and into Mexico and Bahrain by the 1990s.

Mall traffic started drying up nationwide by the 2000s.

Steak Escape is down to 20 restaurants across six states today.

A couple of Ohio locations are still holding on, including one tucked inside the Dayton Mall food court.